Rachel's Eden
by Penya
Summary: Alternative and sequel Ever After Graphic scenes planned for later. Still a work in progress. Posted mostly as a cry for help with the making. Romance - Friendship - Family - Smut - Ral - Trench - Orgy - Angst -Etc. Reader Discretion Advised
1. Chasing Ohem

**Characters and Alternative Reality belong to Kim Harrison. I am not Kim Harrison. Daydreams and future perversion belong to me.**

**Warning Future: explicit sex scenes, violence, fowl language, dubious consent, slavery, seduction, angst, sorrow, loss, blackmail, humiliation, really slow updates, etc.**

**My mind can come up with some very disturbing things in ways that make me feel they are essential to the story.  
****Don't like, don't read. Write your own story.**

**You have been warned.**

**Reader Discretion Advised.**

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******Sorry for Short Chapters, Long Chapters, Late Updates, and Constantly switching things around.**

**After reading Ever After, I found myself having to revamp my other fanfic Demons Return. Most of my plans for the rest of this story is still in place though I'll have to change some things around. Hopefully, I will continue them both. There will be quite a lot of overlapping between the two stories. Some readers may want to stick with just one over the other.**

**Suggestions?**

**Reviews Appreciated**

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What happened to my vow to start being smarter about my decisions? I mused as I made my way around the sewer tunnels, enshrouded by toxic fumes, searching for a rampant hundreds of years old undead vampire, alone. Jenks was anxiously going from man whole to man whole, marking my pace. The poor pixy had dropped one foot into the tunnel after me and had promptly fainted from the noxious stench. I'd thankfully been able to catch him before he sank into the muck. The quickly approaching summer was not helping with our search; it was currently suck on molten sludge mode.

I'd given Nina my room in our once again re-sanctified church, Ivy was with her at the church to protect her incase walkie-talkie man, A.K.A Ohem, the vampire I was currently chasing after, tried once again to take back his maltricent child. Rynn Cormel, our city's leading undead vamp, had been twice angered that he had been forced to share his children with the fallen undead and then again when their violent blood sacrifice had not been enough to sate the bereft vampire. Ohem had not gone out to meet the sun that morning, but had somehow managed to slip into the underground tunnel system beneath Cincinnati. Mindless, he'd attacked me, and run from me when I drew a line through his centuries old ass. Right through a sewer, which unfortunately could let out into several other sub tunnels with several different access points. I got to follow after him, glad that my waterproof, disposable coveralls would keep the heated muck off me, though I still planned to throw out the entire outfit once I'd found the dead rat.

It was unsure whether or not the vampire would remain revenant after dark or not, but I wanted him caught now, before he was free to attack our church. I still had to go back sanitize before readying for the funeral prosession. Not to mention I was supposed to have packed up some stuff to make room for Nina and move in with Trent, at least while Quen and the girls were gone. I wasn't sure what I was going to do now that Elsabeth had came back with the girls for the ceremony. We didn't particularly like each other. Though, we could have started off on the wrong foot. What with her finding me soaking naked in her bathroom and promptly gone to tell off her fiancé, assuming I was a prostitute. The way she'd glossed over all the scraps and bruises made me wonder exactly what kind of sex the billionaire was into. _No, bad Rachel!_

I eventually came to the first fork - each path looked equally disturbing. I prayed as I opened my second sight that I might be able to trace a residual energy path from where my own aura had impacted his in our little scuffle – a trick the IS had just learned and that Jenks and I had crashed a seminar on at the first hit of spring. There was a faint trace for me to follow, but what I saw in the mirrored everafter distracted me from it. There were cameras and raised wheeled chairs pointed straight at me. A demon with a bulbous news microphone was dictating into his prop while his voice was pumped into the surrounding crowd. I saw an enormous mega screen in the background and had a nice view of my own mouth dropping open in surprise and then of myself gagging, trying to learn to breath around the stench.

_Great_, I was a demon reality show_. I had better be collecting royalties for this._

I hurried after the trace and tried to ignore the itchy feeling between my shoulder blades. I only had an hour or so before twilight, and I had no way of knowing what would happen from there. I wanted the parasite bagged so Ivy's and Nina's overly stressed pheromones wouldn't overwhelm me when I got home. I had no wish to test my new found resilience against vamp pheromones on two emotional, edgy roommates, and a new live in lover.

I caught up to him waiting impatiently just before the squares of light let in my the manhole I was pretty sure lead up to Eden park, where I'd had a picnic once with Kisten before he'd died twice to protect me from Ivy's former undead IS boss. Black eyes turned at the sound of my feet shuffling across the concrete walk. No one was home.

My head cracked back against the curved wall, and I was out.


	2. Revenant's Threat

Dark brown eyes scrutinized me as I shifted uncomfortably on Ivy's comfortable conference chair. I wasn't the one being interviewed. Why was I the one wringing my hands? The vampire across from me was not menacing, but it was always unhealthy to catch too much of an undead's attention. I was glad Ivy was gone, her absent anger nearly palpable, not that I blamed her. Nina was still struggling to pick up the pieces of the life the man had carelessly shattered. He had awoken instinctual hungers she had not the power, practice, or strength of will to control, and then he had been more of an encumbrance than help. Giving himself up to the thirst for sunlight and emotions, things vampires had to give up when they died. Ivy was working with Nina; teaching her control. If anyone could help her it would be Ivy, but there was no help for Ohem. He had given up on survival, now it was just a matter of how many people he would hurt before he could gather enough courage to brave the sunlight and end his eternal misery. Cormel was angry that we couldn't simply give him Nina, and let them find piece together. I sided on Ivy with this one. Why should Nina suffer and die just so this one selfish vampire could dredge up the courage to end it. And, I saw what it was doing for the other living vampires, the hope she was inspiring that they too might be saved from the fatalistic destinies. Rynn Cormel was wrong, soulled undead weren't to be the future of vampire kind, Ivy would be, Ivy as her hope for a real future for her living cousins. Jenks and I were going to help her fight for that future.

Our guest shouldn't have been able to step foot in our sanctuary, had he the courtesy of showing up in his own damned body. Raphael, his host's name and the one the dead man was going by now, had a dark mahogany pebbly skin and a wrinkled bold head on top of a round almost flabby body that could probably bench press three times my body weight. And he was still alive, for now. Something about him made me think civil servant, but I had not had a chance to meet the man. Raphael had shown up at our doorstep after my through scrubbing and rung our doorbell already occupied. Raphael, not our doorbell.

"I'm sorry but I have no intention of helping you." I told him outright. Raphael smirked, his leers much more masculinity insulting than they had been on Nina's sweet face. As if he hadn't just been smashing my face against the concrete walls of a forgotten subway skeleton, mindless but for his own animistic rage.

"I have mentioned before, Ms. Morgan, how regrettable it is that we let you slip through our fingers. Surely, at this point you realize how…precarious your situation is. Your coffers must be pinching what with your FIB friend handing in the red slip and all the media coverage concerning your…ethnicity. Let me help you to help yourself." He smiled at me with a look that might have been coy had it been on more appropriately dainty features. I stiffened as he breathed in deeply, shifting his shoulders back as he tasted my unease, something that had not sat quite right on Nina.

I put my feet square on the floor and tried to look as relaxed as possible – but I wasn't. God, I hated dealing with the old ones.

"If I remember correctly, the last time I worked for you not only was I kidnaped and experimented on, but you also threatened to frame me if I didn't solve the crime for you." I was likely shortening my lifespan by saying no to the IS, but all Raphael did was smile. He tilted his head, dangerously suave he eyed me from under thick eyelashes.

"Come now, Ms. Morgan, surely you won't be holding that simple misunderstanding against me."

"Simple misunderstanding," I said outraged. "Because you were so stupidly overconfident of your abilities, not only was a suspect killed and the raid bugled, but I ended up kidnapped when I had to fight off their rescue party alone!

"You suspected me at every crime scene and even after the fiasco at the first take, you still insisted in actively participating in the second take.

"You used Nina, you used her and just dismissed the consequences. You make bad decisions that get people killed and I have no wish to put myself in the same position." Dark pupils dilated at the adrenaline pouring off me.

"In the end, you will end up helping me anyway," the Vampire riding Raphael warned. Then he smiled, "why not take advantage of the benefits?"

"I'm not going to work for you," I said and stood. "Now, if you don't mind, I would like you to leave." Rapheal stood, slowly glancing over at Ivy's grand piano. My roommate had just barely managed to hide Nina in a safe house when I had been back by sunset. Not that walkie-talkie man had shown up right away. I'd had enough time to throw my clothes in a dumpster and scrub myself within an inch of my life after coming around caked in dirt.

"Be reasonable, Ms. Morgan, I'm sure we can come to a beneficial conclusion for both our parties." He stretched languorously, the motion looking peculiar with the civil servants husky pot belly.

"Remember, we did promise to hold you accountable if you didn't help us catch the murderers."

"That's not fair! Trent and I caught them!"

"Yes and handed them over to an organization that doesn't exist." I gawped in protest, pacing away with my fists clenched.

"It's not my fault you guys are so incompetent the humans could show you up any day of the week!" Stupid idea. Stupid witch to taunt the undead vampire, I thought as I went flying across the sanctuary and sliding through the hallway towards the kitchen and back living room.

He was on me before my breath even had a chance to fully vacate my lungs. Catching me around the waste and ending my glide towards the back door. His breath igniting the vampire pheromones hidden under my neonatal flawless skin. I shivered in what I wish had been fear.

"Stupid vampires," I said angry. "Say anything they don't like and they resort to evolutionary handicaps. If You guys were so strong you wouldn't need the damn pheromones to get things done."

He chuckled and pulled my hips closer. Making my breath catch at the hint of teeth he let show.

"I could bleed you right here, right now. I could make you beg for it. You would do anything, anyone, just for the chance that I might take you." Heat pooled in my groin, and I had to actively focus to keep from grinding against him. The calloused hand around my neck slipped down around my shoulders to support my weight. The arms around my waist slipped away, replaced by a horny fist kneading between my thighs.

Enflamed and irritated I pushed against his shoulders and twisted in his arms, struggling to free myself.

"Hands off Ms. Morgan," a tiny alarmed six year old pointed a sword at the vamp's eyelid aggressively. A contingent of Jenks remaining kids pointed drawn bows at our visitor. Jenks kids may have looked like innocent cherubs, but they were vicious predators ready and willing to kill to protect their clan. I was honored that they considered me family.

"That's the problem with vampires. Live a century or two and think they own the world. Stupid, foolish upstart children." A cultured voice declaimed from the direction of the back door. The pixys scattered. I didn't need help anymore, but they might if Al caught them. Or Al might.

Raphael dropped me, and I did the bridge with my neck to see the upside down countenance of a demon in pressed green velvet and smoked glasses. What the hell was Al doing here?

"What in the name of Abel's little green apples are you doing here?"

"Honestly, Child, did you plan to honor Ceri dressed like that?" He indicated my stretch pants and dressing robe. - He'd once threatened to flay me if he ever found me wearing sweat pants again. - I felt like smacking myself. Of course Al would know about Ceri's funeral, I'd told him. And of course he would plan to attend – though I didn't know how the elves were going to take it, especially the sea and mountain elves who had flown in for her funeral.

Al had loved Ceri, in his own, broken way. I'd almost wanted to convince Trent to join the collective, if only so Al would have someone else to give drunken calls to in the middle of the night, when his loneliness and sorrow overwhelmed him. In his drunken sorrow he'd mistake me, offering me anything, if only I would sing to him one last time.

It was more than just Ceri he grieved. It was all the hundreds of people he'd known and lost, or even forgotten, torn from him by war, murder, betrayal, time. There are burdens to immortality.

Al misted to the very edge of the sanctified ground. Which, coincidentally happened to be right where my head was. The demon sized up the undead vampire dismissively.

"I have lived, will live millennia beyond your pallid existence." My hands grabbed at his wrist as he pulled me half off my knees by my hair. I shivered as my vulnerable throat was exposed to the vampire halfway across the sanctuary. There was something sardonic about a vampire hiding from a demon on sacred ground.

"This little Witchling will live millennia beyond you. And she won't have to relinquish her soul to do it." The undead's gaze peering out of Rapheal's fully dilated pupils filled with a kind of lustful hunger twisted with a lick of hate.

"Oh yes," Al baited, breathing the words into my ear as he enjoyed the undead-vampire's seething frustration. "And of course there is that irksome little problem you have with degeneration. Up until you succumb to your human mortality of course. Pitiable Temporals. Having to buy stunted, runt, witch spells to hide repugnant lines and wrinkles, how unequivocally mortifying. For you, of course – my itchy witch here need not worry her pretty little head over such triviality." Al was brimming with malevolent mirth. Aging was a tender issue for Vampires. Most undead indulged in youth/vanity spells – generally having exceeded the age they would have preferred to spend forever in before their first death.

"Al knock it off," I pulled away from him. "What are you doing here anyway. I'm not leaving for the stables for another two hours or so." I sounded petulant, but Al was more inclined to indulge me when I acted childish than when I tried the mine's-bigger-than-yours approach.

"Protecting my investment," was his non-answer. "Besides, did you really plan to jump there?" I had. "And arrive the very attar of burnt amber? You aren't even dressed yet, do you plan to make us late for Ceri's ceremony? She would be quite cross you know," He continued as I ran into my bedroom, slamming the door behind me. Trent had had me fitted for a traditional elven mourning gown. He'd helped teach me the songs of mourning, the sounds and melodies if not the meaning of the words. The thought of having to sing in front of so many people, butchering their cultural language...Even in death, Ceri was pushing me outside of my comfort zone, as only she could do.

"Collecting yet another nasty little man are we? You really must stop this. It's getting to be an embarrassingly bad habit." Al called from outside the room. From the echo, I guessed he was examining my bathroom.

"Al this is undead John Doe, currently inhabiting a Mr. Raphael Doe." I wedged open the door to introduce them as I tried to situate the gown and assessories, pixy children putting my hair into an elaborate braid. "Ralph," there was a grumbling protest. Apparently Mr. walkie-talkie man didn't like his new nickname. "Meet Al, my demon…ah...my demon."

"Curious. So the vampires still retain the ability to possess a living body." Al studied Raphael as if he were a museum display behind glass. "Only Newt remembers how to do that.

"They were created by us, you know. After the weres of course. But then, the weres had been for fun. The parasitic mosquitoes were a failed experiment to return to reality. Sure, they became as immortal as us after death, and naturally vacated living bodies were hard to come by those days. But, they still have human blood, no way around it. The spell just doesn't catch on anything stronger. Even the witch runts could throw it off." I thought of the pulsating vampire pheromones in my neck and disagreed.

"That's what you were going to be used for. Did you know? As soon as Newt had decided what soul would make the best obedient little broodmare for her, she was going to use our little student fetching agreement to have me snatch you up and refill you. Might want to keep that in mind the next time your piddling elfling offers you a little disembodiment spell."

Ralph – walkie-talkie man – did seem to know how to take being so outright discounted. "Perhaps we should continue our discussion another time then." He suggested, trying to nonchalantly disregard the demon the way Al was utterly ignoring his existence. Damn, you'd think there was nothing more frightening than the old undead until a demon showed up and made the ruling terrors of the underland look like children playing dress up.

"No. Leave Nina alone. I have nothing else to say to you." I left the room. In the elven regalia I even felt imperial enough to look down on the vampire myself. Rich elven outfits and pixy stylists, anyone else would have looked ethereal. I didn't look half bad myself.

Ohem's eyes narrowed on me, and I took a step back further towards the safer, unsanctified grounds. Funny that.

"Mmmmmm it has been so long since I have been in a sanctified church. The taste is far more electric, it is quite pleasing." Raphael gave me an indolent smile, threatening. Pointing out that he was on sanctified ground, were as my demon mentor was not. Pissing contest between the immortally damned, if only Al had not declined to notice.

"I believe I will have to stop by more often," he threatened. "I look forward to seeing you again, Ms. Morgan. Being near you is always quite the escapade." I didn't even see him make his way to the door before I heard the soft swish of its closing. Coward. Or was it just smart. Running from a demon, yeah, that did sound smart. So, why didn't anyone run from me?


	3. Namaarie Ceri

**Ceri's Requem**

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The funeral procession started just past the Kalamack stables. I held Ray, Trent held Lucy, Al was even given a mount to follow behind me. Quen carried Ceri before him in the saddle. Her perfectly preserved body seeming to sleep in his arms as he guided the wild hunt of mourning. The singing started from the back, until we the men and babes around me, too, joined the psalm.

Faced with the glamour of the elven grieving I could not bring myself, yet, to open my own secular chant. Yet, as Ceri's Sa'han, it was my place to begin the final requiem to guide her beyond the grave. I'd had but three days, and lucky to have that, to learn the beautiful melody in its foreign tongue. And now, it was time to sing our farewell to Ceri forever. On the coast we would have sent her out to sea in a small canoe with offerings, an arrow to set the watery coffin afire. Land locked as we were, and in the realm of the forest elves, Trent's domain, Ceri would be buried to become one with the forest – a new preserve the Kalamack legacy had bought and dedicated just for her. Jih and her husband would tend her grave in the years to come, until their own children scattered at their deaths. The elves had sung on our ride of mourning, the majesty and sorrow of their song had blinded me until I had found myself dismounting at a grove I hardly remembered entering. I opened my mouth again and again as they lowered Ceri's still body into the grave, as regal in death as she had been in life. Algizarrept* stepped forward, and it took some very stern hands to keep silent those who would protest a demon's presence at an elven burial. A cress of his fingers, and flowers grew entwined into her hair. Butterflies lay down to rest with her, as still and beautiful as their eternal mistress. I felt tears trail down my cheeks, unchecked and unheeded. Ceri was gone; it was right to cry.

Al stepped back with a deep rumbling hum. I was not good at singing, let alone on par with the voice of an elf. I began my montra, keeping my tone steady, my words rhythmic. A voice joined mine, Quen, a dark harmony to twine with mine and give it the music it could not have on its own. Trent joined, and you could almost see her smiling back at you. And then the women joined, and for one beautiful blessed moment I heard her laughter, felt the touch of her hand, the warmth of her love. We sung and mourned and even Ray joined us. For that intransendant moment, Ceri was with us, happy. As the grave diggers buried her and the pixys wove their tribute into the freshly turned soil, we looked into the elven paradise between this world and the next. And, I knew, great as her loss was to us, it would be curse, not blessing, to tear her from the arms of heaven. My heart both broke and found solace in that moment of clarity.


End file.
